re: King Nokia (NOK) - I Highly Recommend ...
... this book, ("The Nokia Revolution"), to anyone interested in modern day business strategy, to gorilla gamers, to any Nokia investor, anyone considering NOK as an investment, anyone invested in or intending to invest in wireless, any Qualcommer who views Nokia as the evil enemy (know thy enemy as thyself), or anyone who thinks that the 20,000 employees of Nokia engaged in R&D simply design colored faceplates, or think that the "Nokia look and feel" refers simply to the form factor and cosmetic look of Nokia mobile phones.
This exceptionally well researched and written book purports to deliver "the first comprehensive strategic study of Nokia".
It delivers on it's promise.
The book chronicles strategy making at Nokia in depth, how its executives think, and how and when it listens to its customers.
Gorilla Gamers will enjoy the discussion of "Technology-Adoption Life Cycles", in the "Downstream Innovation" chapter, and the discussion of Geoffrey Moore's ideas that originated in classic technology-adoption frameworks. The author notes that Nokia's marketeer's studied these idea's (contained in "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado") diligently.
He also notes that "Moore's frameworks for marketing strategies fit Nokia's efforts at market-making strategies, which were founded on taking advantage of discontinuities in emerging technology markets. ... In Nokia's marketing strategies the chasm framework has enabled the company to tailor appropriate responses to the early adopter [upstream innovation] and the late-adopter markets [downstream innovation]".
The book discusses "strategic inflection points" in some detail in the chapter titled "Strategic Market Making" - which essentially are the transition points between generations of technology, and "in the medium term Nokia's paradigm has consisted of corporate and business strategies and strategic architecture. Since the 1980's this architecture has evolved in four phases articulating the central corporate challenges":
* First generation: analog cellular (early 1980's)
* Second generation: digital networks (late 1980's to early 1990's).
* Third generation: data and voice communications, i.e., convergence of IP/cellular (late 1990's to early 2000's).
* Fourth generation: wireless/wireline broadband transparency (2010 and beyond).
Skimming ahead (or is it behind - I started in the middle) the book also discusses Nokia's study of and application of "the Network Effect"
This is not a read in one sitting book. It is packed with the results of prodigious research into the mobile communications industry, and includes a wealth of charts (some requiring a magnifier), stats and well documented corporate and geopolitical and economic history.
It is a book one reads with a marker, a tin of page points (had to rush reorder from Levengers), a fine point pen and some sticky notes at hand.
When I have finished, it will join Moore's 4 titles, Christensen's, Morris & Ferguson's, Thomas Peter's "In search of Excellence", Mary Walton's "The Deming Management Method", r. William C. Y. Lee's "Essentials of Wireless Communications", and a few others, in easy reach on my desktop bookshelf.
It will stay there, irregardless of how long I hold Nokia, although I will hold Nokia as long as they are King, or until it becomes clear that Nokia's strategic intent articulated by Jorma Ollila in 1999 will not be fulfilled:
"Nokia's strategic intent is to take a leading, brand recognized role in creating the Mobile Information Society by combining mobility and the Internet, and stimulating the creation of new services."
The Nokia Revolution: The Story of an Extraordinary Company That Transformed an Industry
Author: Dan Steinbock
List Price: $27.95
Amazon Price: $22.36
Hardcover - 352 pages 1st edition (May 31, 2001) - ISBN: 081440636X
amazon.com
Table of Contents
Preface & Introduction
Part I: The Diversification Strategy
1. The Origins of Nokia
2. Kairamo's Vision of a European Technology Concern
3. The Crash of the Investment Economy: Nokia's Years of Turmoil
Part II: The Global Focus Strategy
4. Restructuring: The Focus Strategy
5. Strategic Intent
6. Global Focus
7. Strategic Market Making
Part III: Toward the Mobile Information Society
8. Nokia's R&D: Focusing and Globalization
9. Upstream Innovation
10. Downstream Innovation
11. Nokia's Secret Code
Appendix: A Note on the Finnish Sources
About the Author:
Dan Steinbock (New York City and Helsinki) is an affiliate researcher at the Columbia Business School and is a member of Columbia Universities Institute for Tele-Information ((CITI) and a visiting virtual professor at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. In the early 1990's Steinbock's researched focused on digital convergence . He has served as a strategy consultant for TIM and Sonera.
Excerpts from Selected Reviews:
The book provides insights that are invaluable to managers coping with change as well as to anyone seeking to participate in the wireless future. - Tom Wheeler, President & CEO of CTIA -
What emerges from the author's thorough corporate history and thoughtful analysis of Nokia's strategies, is a profile of a company that has unknowingly created many of the modern business approaches that companies today strive for. Agility, innovation, alignment, first mover advantage -- Nokia used them all to successfully create market niches and ultimately become a global leader in one of the hottest technology trends in recent years -- wireless. There is nothing on the shelves that competes with the author's comprehensive and in-depth approach. This book became a business classic the minute it hit the shelves!
While the author, a "visiting virtual professor" at the Helsinki School of Economics as well as a researcher at the Columbia Business School, is clearly enamored with the company, he never slips into mindless praise, letting Nokia's record speak for itself. (June 29) Forecast: The dot-coms are going up in smoke, but we still have our Nokias. Amid New Economy eulogies, readers interested in mobile communications and corporate strategy will be glad to find a high-tech success story they can still believe in.
Disclosure:
I was invested in Nokia from 1995 till late 1998 and enjoyed a sensational return, particularly since I doubled my position immediately following Nokia's crippling Q3 1996 earnings warning resulting from a logistics blunder. I started investing in Nokia again in November 2000. Currently I hold equal quantity of shares in Qualcomm and Nokia so my Nokia position is one third that of my position in Qualcomm. My average cost for Nokia shares is $24.25. The majority of shares were purchased with proceeds from the reduction of my Qualcomm position earlier this year at $88. The reduction of my Qualcomm position was a portfolio balancing matter, and not dissatisfaction with Qualcomm which is, IMO, a premier long term hold. I will be increasing my Nokia position by 50% if my limit buy hits over the next few weeks.
Nokia Project Hunt Status:
Overdue as usual, but well in progress. One more new Nokia book to read after this one. Lots of editing and trimming back to do, and some financials analyses, for which I will seek some help because I am a 1.) who relies on others to drill on valuation. It is sort of like the inevitable Nokia/Qualcomm license agreement was. It will be done when it is done.
Merlin: If you have gotten this far in this post I wanted to say that I owe you a response to your post #44055. When I respond I will be referencing some comments made by this author in this book.
Best,
- Eric - |
